Hillary Clinton Advisor Claims Earth Faces Overpopulation Despite Birth Dearth

International   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Apr 1, 2009   |   9:00AM   |   WASHINGTON, DC

Hillary Clinton Advisor Claims Earth Faces Overpopulation Despite Birth Dearth

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
April 1
, 2009

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — An advisor to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claims the Earth faces overpopulation problems even though dozens of nations are seeing too few births to support an aging population. While some nations are following the new 4-2-1 population model Nina Fedoroff claims the planet has too many people.

The new model is seeing nations like Japan, many countries in Europe, and even the United States seeing one child who will be expected to support two parents and four total parents and grandparents.

The model shows how nations like Canada, England, Japan, Russia and others are facing acute worker shortages and problems putting enough money into social and government systems from workers to support retirees.

Still, Fedoroff told the BBC One Planet program that humans had exceeded the Earth’s "limits of sustainability."

"We need to continue to decrease the growth rate of the global population; the planet can’t support many more people," she claimed. "There are probably already too many people on the planet."

"We have six-and-a-half-billion people on the planet, going rapidly towards seven," she complained.

Fedoroff’s comments fly in the face of evidence from across the globe.

Japan faces such strong underpopulation problems that companies are more frequently letting their workers leave work early: to go home and make babies. The Japanese birth rate, currently at 1.34, is well below the 2.0 threshold needed to maintain a nation’s population.

The Bank of Japan index underscores the problems by showing that the demand for labor is at its highest level in 16 years. By 2030, the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research estimates the Japanese workforce will shrink 20 percent.

With fewer babies born over the years, the agency says 40 percent of Japan’s population will be 65 or older by 2050 — more than doubling the current ratio.

Barry McLerran, producer of "Demographic Winter," a documentary on underpopulation problems, sees the abortion-underpopulation problem playing out in Russia as well.

"Russia has one of the lowest birth rates in the world at 1.17 children per woman," he told LifeNews.com. "A nation needs a birth rate of 2.0 just to replace current population."

"Because of its low birth rate and early deaths — due to disease and other factors — Russia is losing approximately 750,000 people a year," he explained.

Most demographers generally believe that Russia’s current population of 144 million will fall to 115 million by 2050. But Murray Feshbach, with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, thinks Russia’s population will drop to 101 million and could go as low as 77 million by mid-point in this century.

Phillip Longman, a senior fellow with the New America Foundation, also counters the claims from the Clinton aide.

"Yes, human population is still growing in some places dramatically so. But at the same time, a strange new phenomenon is spreading around the globe, one whose very existence contradicts the deepest foundations of our modern mind-set," he says.

"Starting in the world’s richest, best-fed nations during the 1970s,and now spreading throughout the developing world, we find birthrates falling below the levels needed to avoid long-term, and in many instances, short-term, population loss," he adds.

Longman says the phenomenon has spread beyond Europe and Asia to Latin America.

"Brazil is an aging nation that no longer produces enough children to replace its population.The same is true of Chile and Costa Rica. Joining them over the next 10 to 20 years, the U.N. projects, will be many other countries Americans still tend to associate with youth bulges including Mexico, Argentina, Indonesia, India, Vietnam, Algeria, Kuwait, Libya and Morocco," he explains.

"Birthrates have declined so quickly in Mexico that its population of children younger than 15 has been in free-fall since 2000 and is expected to drop by one-third over the next 40 years," Longman concludes.

The U.N. projects that world population could begin declining as early as 2040.

Related web sites:
Demographic Winter – https://www.demographicwinter.com

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